Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!aioe.org!feeder.news-service.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: "Pascal J. Bourguignon" Newsgroups: comp.programming Subject: Re: Is binary a "language"? Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2011 19:23:22 +0200 Organization: Informatimago Lines: 67 Message-ID: <87sjtj8m45.fsf@kuiper.lan.informatimago.com> References: <48ecad59-950d-40ff-9fa6-6f107008335a@fu15g2000vbb.googlegroups.com> <87wrizczf3.fsf@kuiper.lan.informatimago.com> <90j6tbFlrfU1@mid.individual.net> <87lizfcy54.fsf@kuiper.lan.informatimago.com> <29fc0345-1b7b-4e11-bcfe-bde8adebae93@v33g2000prn.googlegroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: individual.net hHMBoCvMB9wisBxQdEbk8gzNBaYW2eqWQrwu4ILIXaeSHEO+J7 Cancel-Lock: sha1:YzUwOTkzNmJhMDkwNTRhZjg3ZGU1NGM2MzVlNjA3OTJjMDIwYjdkNw== sha1:ZVWss/fOh7UiCY5xFEhgn0NrtEQ= Face: iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAADAAAAAwAQMAAABtzGvEAAAABlBMVEUAAAD///+l2Z/dAAAA oElEQVR4nK3OsRHCMAwF0O8YQufUNIQRGIAja9CxSA55AxZgFO4coMgYrEDDQZWPIlNAjwq9 033pbOBPtbXuB6PKNBn5gZkhGa86Z4x2wE67O+06WxGD/HCOGR0deY3f9Ijwwt7rNGNf6Oac l/GuZTF1wFGKiYYHKSFAkjIo1b6sCYS1sVmFhhhahKQssRjRT90ITWUk6vvK3RsPGs+M1RuR mV+hO/VvFAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg== X-Accept-Language: fr, es, en User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.2 (gnu/linux) Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.programming:235 spinoza1111 writes: > On Apr 12, 11:00 pm, "Pascal J. Bourguignon" > wrote: >> "osmium" writes: >> > "Pascal J. Bourguignon" wrote: >> >> >> Decimal computers used electronic tubes with ten states. >> >> > Can you provide a reference to such a computer that ever got out of >> > someone's basement?  My guess is that you can not. >> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC >> >> Perhaps you could learn some computing history.   >> After all it's less than a hundred years of history, even a lazy bumb >> could have some notions. > > "ENIAC used ten-position ring counters to store digits; each digit > used 36 vacuum tubes, 10 of which were the dual triodes making up the > flip-flops of the ring counter. Arithmetic was performed by "counting" > pulses with the ring counters and generating carry pulses if the > counter "wrapped around", the idea being to emulate in electronics the > operation of the digit wheels of a mechanical adding machine. ENIAC > had twenty ten-digit signed accumulators which used ten's complement > representation and could perform 5,000 simple addition or subtraction > operations between any of them and a source (e.g., another > accumulator, or a constant transmitter) every second. It was possible > to connect several accumulators to run simultaneously, so the peak > speed of operation was potentially much higher due to parallel > operation." > > But ... weren't the tubes themselves bistable? Isn't this why they are > called "flip flops"? Without being an electronics whiz it looks to me > as if the ENIAC, just like the 1401, was an over-elaborate simulation > of decimal based on binary devices. > > I maintain that you need to go back to adding machines with ten > position wheels to get n above two. > > Or, analogue computers where n = aleph-one, that is, nondenumerable > infinity. The flip-flops weren't used to store bits, but to emulate in hardware the workings of a mechanical adding machines. Thanks to pointing this out, it's even funnier. While the ENIAC was a decimal computer, it indeed used binary components, but wired in such a way as to provide ten-state hardware. It's funny how they choosed this more complex set-up than a purely binary design. A clear case of "width of the shuttle". http://www.astrodigital.org/space/stshorse.html So we'll have to fall back to the Russians's Сетунь for the development of a ternary, 3-state electronic tubes-based computer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun http://www.computer-museum.ru/english/setun.htm -- __Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/ A bad day in () is better than a good day in {}.